Age of Decadence - Interview @ Forbes

March 15th, 2013, 14:34

Vince has been interviewed by Forbes on Age of Decadence and went into some detail when answering these questions.

Age of Decadence is a turn-based RPG with real-time adventure and many text-based choices. Tell me about your design decisions for the game. What inspired the game? How does it compare to other RPGs?
Old games like Darklands, for example, used text-based choices quite liberally. They add a lot to the atmosphere and immersion (assuming one likes reading) by greatly increasing the number of possible actions at any given moment and enriching a game.

I remember playing Planescape: Torment, a classic Black Isle’s RPG – don’t forget to check Brian Fargo’s Kickstarter for Torment’s spiritual successor – and there was a moment early in the beginning, when you had to deal with giant skeletons, animated as guardians of the Mortuary.
You could simply fight them or you could study them, study the armor and spells on it, and then try to dispel the enchantments (which would cause the skeletons to collapse). You needed either very high Intelligence to figure it out or a dusty old tome you could consult for help. You can’t do such things without text-based options and detailed descriptions. I think I fell in love with the game at that very moment and Torment was certainly one of the inspirations – not the setting or story, but the way they used writing to enrich the game.
Another design aspect that’s worth mentioning is combat difficulty. It’s a hard game.
Combat difficulty is integrated into the setting. You can’t say that the world is harsh and unforgiving and then allow the player to kill everyone who looks at him or her funny. The game has to be hard, dying should be easy, and you should have reasons to pick your fights.
You aren’t a powerful hero who can defeat anyone and save the world and it is the difficulty that reinforces this notion. Make the game easier and we’re back to the powerful hero setup.

Love how he's proud of appealing to such a small niche and the extreme difficulty but that has got me thinking, I fully respect the wish to be challenging but does the game have a quicksave function? If it does (and if Vince or one of the devs is reading) would it be possible to have more that one quicksave slots* with the latest overwriting the oldest? I'm a quicksave abuser so I'd hate overwriting what is usually my only save after a very hard battle only to realise that it'll be followed by something equally or more hard because the dialogue option I picked put me in much bigger trouble than I expected. I think it's a convenience that if technically possible and not a huge PITA to implement wouldn't in any way affect the challenge.

*3 is the most common after 1 afaik

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I'd just like to interject here and point out that I'm not going to say anything to spoil the mood, Chief. I'll just float here and watch. Don't mind me, just sitting here, floating and watching, that's me.

I appreciate the dev's strong vision for this game and how he unabashedly presents it. No trying to "be all things to all people", but a strongly focused hardcore single-player RPG where choices and combat have real consequences.

A great antithesis to some of the mushy RPG Kickstarters we've seen recently. I hope he can deliver on his vision.

I, too, respect his unflinching position and look forward to the full game. If you'll recall, however, he wasn't exactly met with heaps of praise, even around here, when the demo was released — mostly complaints from people who had their arses handed to them. Me? I'm pretty used to having my arse handed to me and don't mind so much.

Really? Wow. I might have to lock myself up this fall, so many great games… How am I supposed to free up so much time? Maybe I should break up with my girlfriend and sell the house, then I could afford to stay home for a month or two…

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
Really? Wow. I might have to lock myself up this fall, so many great games… How am I supposed to free up so much time? Maybe I should break up with my girlfriend and sell the house, then I could afford to stay home for a month or two…

Nah just ask your gf is she could support your gaming hobby for few months